I mean that in the literal sense. It settled all over the interior of the house, especially in the attic, the dining room and the living room. I guess that should be expected when you have guys on the roof dropping packs of shingles. It has been guys with hammers and saws on and off since the Monday after Thanksgiving. They are finally finished. We had an estimate done for the attic windows and front storm door. The estimator said the magic words “hail damage”. That usually means some insurance coverage for a new roof. So we went for it. Sure enough, they covered the the whole replacement price. We added a ridge vent at our own expense. They ended up removing the existing shingles and even replacing some wood. There was a crew of six men on the roof for two days. The third day two guys came and finished up. Soon after that the soffit men came and replaced soffits on both dormers. Finally today they installed windows in the north dormer and a new front storm door.
I spent most of that time trying to stay out of the way. Birding has been very slow, with two exceptions. On December 7th the Purple Sandpiper was relocated in Waukegan. It is usually seen on the north pier at the beach but the high water levels have reduced the availability of algae on that pier. But a clever birder (not me) looked on the pier to the south and found the bird feeding on a nice algae mat growing on the south side of the pier. So everyone rushed to the lakefront to see the bird. Then early yesterday morning a Snowy Owl was seen hunting over the dunes at Waukegan. But the bird vanished after the first sighting and had to be re-found. Andy was north on the beach so I headed west to the long parking lot. The gulls were making a lot of noise and circling over the boats at Larson Marine. Finally I I saw a white bird on top of a light pole. It sat in a different posture than a gull would and looked pretty white. At that point a truck stopped and a guy with a big camera got out and aimed it at the bird. I was pretty sure he wasn’t photographing a gull. After a few moments the bird moved to a sailboat mast in the marina. It was the Snowy! I texted to the group and Andy and friends were able to see it even though they were still on the beach. After that everyone within driving range raced to the beach. It only stayed till about 2:30 pm and hasn’t been seen since.
